Panel Reluctantly Recommends Shuttering Last U.S. Collider

A panel of scientists has recommended shutting the last U.S. grand atom smasher, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, to make room in a tight budget for other projects funded by the Department of Energy (DOE). Closing RHIC would be a disaster for the U.S. nuclear physics community, says Robert Tribble, a nuclear physicist at Texas A&M University, College Station, who chaired the committee that suggested doing exactly that in a report today to DOE's Nuclear Science Advisory Committee (NSAC). "I don't think there are winners and losers here," he says. "We're all losers if this comes to pass."

We have abandoned the leading edge of physics so corporations operating in the US can avoid US taxes, and the 1% can buy a second private jet. Meanwhile churches pay no taxes.